The smell of spirits clung to him, but his steps were deliberate. “There’s a smith in particular we wish to find, a man named Isenbend,” he said leaning close. “The cobbler held a memory of him close to the surface.”
She put aside the deeper question of why he had delved the cobbler. “Did you see why?” she asked.
“I touched him by accident,” he said, “and relieving him of his gold seemed the greater priority.” He stopped in front of a shed open on two sides, where a squad of shirtless young men worked the bellows while an older man, wearing a heavy leather apron spotted with soot and scars in equal measure called for more fire.
“Here,” Fess said.
They watched the smith as he peered into an egg-shaped vessel on his hearth, adding alloys with the care and precision of an alchemist. Satisfied, he tipped the vessel on its hinges until molten metal poured out, filling channels of dense green casting sand before filling the smith’s mold.
Toria watched, working to exercise patience as the process continued. The ironmonger’s art had never interested her, but she knew better than to interrupt the smith at his work. Fess stood rapt at her side, almost entranced.
“What do you see?” she murmured.
“Something new.” Both the laughing youth and the stoic guard in his demeanor were absent now, stripped away as Fess watched the smith with singular intensity. “Look there.”
Minutes passed and the glow of molten metal died, fading so that Toria could see the shape of the smith’s cast. Pickaxes. The smith waited until the red glow of the castings had faded, though shimmers of heat still rose from the sand. With a long-handled pair of tongs he pulled each of the tools free and set them on a heavy table covered with brick.
When the smith showed no signs of doing anything further with the castings, Fess led her to a cooper’s stall across the street. The smell of oak filled the air, and barrels in various stages of production filled the aisles. “Isenbend and his work were uppermost in the cobbler’s mind. Have you ever seen a smith work that way before?”
“No,” she said, “but little of the ironworker’s art is known to me.”
He almost smiled. “A boy without a home or apprenticeship has a lot of time between thefts. I used to watch the craftsmen work in Bunard.” He frowned. “I thought that if I could show them how much I knew they might apprentice me out of the urchins.” He pointed. “No smith I’ve ever seen works that way.”
“It’s different?” she asked.
“It’s not just that it’s different, Lady Deel. It’s a complete diversion from the traditional way. He’s made a casting of the pick heads instead of forging them. Then, when he was done, he didn’t quench them, but left them to cool in the air. I’ve never seen the alloying elements he used—chorum and magnetite—spent on a common pickaxe. It’s far cheaper to replace the tool if it breaks.”
“Those elements aren’t found in the mines of Aille,” she said. “Caisel is the source.” Perhaps it was nothing more than an unexpected draft of cool air that raised gooseflesh on her neck. “A gifted smith might have the insight to attempt such.”
Fess turned to give her an unblinking stare. “Would a gifted smith time his work so that he would have to test it during the night? It will be dark before the pick heads will be cool enough to handle.”
The acrid smoke that hung in the air stung her eyes, and the scent of rust and scorched oil abraded her throat. Across the street, Isenbend closed the broad barn doors to his shop, the sound of the bar dropping into place to secure them clear in the late afternoon. “Your experience in the urchins will serve us well, Fess,” she said. “Find us a place we can hide and observe our innovative smith.”
Chapter 18
Toria crouched next to Fess, watching the smith’s shop from behind the closed doors of a competitor next door. A generous quantity of silver along with Fess’s urgings had been insufficient to persuade the man to lend them the use of his business as a watch point. In the end, she’d resorted to the use of her power to confuse him. She allowed herself a sigh of regret and condemnation. Her touch had been unexpectedly clumsy, and the man’s wife, fearing he had suffered a stroke, had taken him to the healer. She had no doubt the healer would wish to observe him for several hours. It would take at least that long for his memories to heal.
An hour after midnight, lantern light floated into Isenbend’s shop, but the smith kept the doors closed.
“Stay here, Lady Deel,” Fess directed.
Before he could leave, she caught him by the arm, a pointless gesture if he wished to pull away. “What do you mean to do?”
“I heard voices. If I am discovered, it will be a simple matter for me to escape.” He pulled the hood of his cloak over his blond hair and ghosted off into the darkness, slipping through the door without a sound.
She waited, catching hints of movement and conversation from Isenbend’s smithy but unable to take the pieces of sight and sound and assemble them into clarity and meaning. She stood in the dark, gnawing her worries, as a voice—Isenbend’s or another’s—rose in pitch, the staccato cadence of command obvious in the clipped delivery. Then a low hum drifted from his shop followed by the shriek of metal.
The strike of flint gave her the only warning that the owner of the shop had returned. Ducking, she hid behind the bellows, but she bumped the heavy leather, and soot drifted in the air.
“You see, love,” a woman said. “There’s no one here. Now come in.
